


A Father's Love

by thereisaredeemer



Series: Unamis...Chingachgook...Uncas.... [3]
Category: The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27424849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisaredeemer/pseuds/thereisaredeemer
Summary: After the deaths of Uncas and Cora, Hawkeye and Chingachgook leave the Delaware village and strike off on their own in their grief. Each deal with the loss of Uncas differently; one blames Cora, the other accepts and wonders if death would bring the peace he longs for.
Series: Unamis...Chingachgook...Uncas.... [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050656





	A Father's Love

**Author's Note:**

> I have this little notebook in which I keep all my random and not so random story ideas that pop up while I am working on a project. I outline them as briefly as possible and let them sit while I finish my project, or get a writers block. A few days ago I was a bit bored, but didn't want to work on any of my already posted stories (on FFN) so I glanced through the notebook and found A Father's Love outlined in a few sentences. I had just finished TLMS a little while before and figured I might as well find out what happened to Hawkeye and Chingachgook after Cooper was finished with them. Wanting to work on a different writing technique I wrote in third-person present-tense. I have tried to imitate Cooper's style as best I can without getting too complex and losing myself and my readers. I hope you enjoy this, because I teared up while writing it, Hawkeye was a bear to write, Chingachgook wasn't much easier.
> 
> Warning: this one-shot is a bit dark, if you don't feel comfortable with grown men contemplating suicide then I'm sorry but you won't like some of this.

It is late evening, the sky is bloody red as the sun slowly sinks on the horizon. On the earth, a few yards from a sharp drop-off, with his back to a lonely pine, a wether beaten man of forty-eight sits. Scalding tears run down his darkly sun-tanned cheeks as he carefully oils a beautifully polished rifle of great length. Standing silhouetted on the edge of the precipice is another man. His features are worn like his weeping companion's, but his skin is tinted with the unmistakable red-copper of the peoples native to America. He stares out unseeingly at the scarlet sun. There is an air of neglect which hangs about both men, as though some deep sorrow weighs them down, saps their strength, dulls their eyes, whispers of the peaceful forgetfulness of death.

The one manifests his grief with unashamed tears, but the other is spent; he has wept till he till he was dry, now his face is vacant. A sharp wind whips mercilessly at his black hair, the crowd eagle plume, which crowns him, slips free—he does not stir from his post to retrieve it. It whisks over the cliff and his eyes follow it down, down, down.

"He died for a woman! A warrior in the prime of his youth for a woman without fear; hardly a fair exchange! And she too lies dead! 'Twas no exchange 'tall!" This contemptuous shout breaks unexpectedly from the white man. He now stands, his weapon clutched angrily in strong fingers. His eyes are a dark steel-gray, they seem to hold unfathomable grief and helpless rage.

The native turns wearily and gazes at his adopted brother; a hint of life returns to him as he rebuke his friend.

"Do not speak ill of the fair one. No, my brother, my son knew his fate when he leapt—even when he awoke his nation—no, Hawkeye, he chose his death. It was an honorable one. Do not rage at the one he so loved; she was my daughter." As these words poured forth a light had kindled in his spirit and emotion had shone through his dull eyes. But ere the wind has carried his words away, he is as lusterless as before.

For a time the white man, Hawkeye, is still, as though turned to stone. Surprise at his brother's claim of kinship with the white woman who had aroused the love of so many crosses his eyes, then shame for his words strikes him in the gut and his face crumples.

"'Twas wrong of me to act so in my anger, Sagamore, to give vent to my spleen on that fair creature. But she is gone; gone back to the dust and Uncas with her…."

A sad nod from the the other is his only reply. The father of the dead warrior turns once more, back to the deep ravine and stares down into the dark face of death. He takes an unconscious step forward, he is now at the very brink. Only a small shift of his stance and he will plummet down a hundred feet or more. He knows he will find his son if he gathers the strength—but uncertainty gnaws at him. Could it really be so simple? If so, why does he shrink from the idea? Is it perhaps, because in losing his son he begins to doubt his beliefs? Who knows? Mayhap he gathers the strength to continue from Hawkeye who has sworn to never leave his side; mayhap the simple, childlike faith the white woman, whom he had come to know, had displayed throughout her journey, unto even death, had shaken him deeply enough to cause him to question the most integral part of himself? None but he will ever know, but he steps back and turns away from the cliff; suicide is not for him, Chingackgook, the last of the Mohicans.

His friend still stands behind him, still fingering his long rifle. Like his Mohican brother Uncas' death has broken him. The loneliness tingles at the base of his skull—the young man with the mirthful eyes snd a ready laugh is gone forever from the earth, so, likewise, are the grim warrior and the cunning huntsman which he had transformed into when the occasion demanded it. This man, Uncas, had been like a son to the unmarried man. Hawkeye had loved the son as dearly as he loves the father—with a love that broke not nor lessened in the midst of difficulty.

He closes his eyes and even now, months after his passing, he can see the boy in his battle wrath: a lithe, proportionally muscled man, tall and commanding of attention, with sparking brown eyes; his fingers are long and slender, his bearing that of a panther and upon his lips is a terrible fighting smile; the blood of his enemies is splattered upon his sculpted breast and his buckskins are coated in gore, he is in the act of turning from his prey and his single tuft of coal-black hair proudly crowns his black painted copper-hued face. This awe inspiring image is all the battered old hunter has left of the warrior youth. A frozen image of a man, who had loved so passionately as to surrender mutely to death for the sake of a woman, that will dim with time…till all that is left is the vague idea of a native warrior who had once inspired the deepest love from a nation of savage warriors.

Hawkeye opens his tear-filled eyes, he sees now that Cora Monro was never to blame, and he mourns the wrong he has done her—a maiden, selfless and brave—by hating her in his heart. Uncas had been a man, and as such he had chosen his path knowing its end. Hawkeye no longer grudges his dead friend that. No; upon the Huron nation will he pour out his grief! He raises his head so that his eyes meet his brother's. His grip upon 'Killdeer' is certain for the first time since he shot and killed Magua.

"This I swear, and may the Lord of all the 'arth hear me and hold me to it; if ever I see one of them skulkers, 'Killdeer' will give such an accounting as she never has before. Till the hour I lay myself down to die, shall I never forget this oath!Fear, men of the Wyandots, for you have awoken a man without a cross and he shall revenge his brother's son!"

With one last scarlet gleam the sun falls below the horizon, leaving the two in the darkening December light. The hunters cross the small space which divides them and clasp each other's shoulders tightly. They will face the night together, as they have faced every other enemy, with their knowledge that the other has their back. The coming years will be bleak, but for now the two old friends will survive. And may the Maquas beware, for La Longue Carabine and La Gros Serpent's wrath is like that of a she-bear's when kindled, and it burns longer than that of the wolf.


End file.
